XXIX IULTCS Congress delivers in Washington

While delivering his paper on the future directions of tanning science, Professor Tony Covington announced his upcoming retirement from the BSLT, describing the Congress as his IULTCS swan song. While the date is not yet fixed he plans only one more public appearance, at the UK SLTC conference. Standing in for the outgoing ALCA president Dennis C Shelly, Dean Didato presided over the opening ceremony along with IULTCS president Marc Folachier and convention chair Douglas Tabor. This was followed by welcome speeches from John Wittenborn, president of Leather Industries of America and John Reddington, president of the US Hide, Skin & Leather Association. The Heidemann Lecture was presented by Lorenz Siggel of BASF, who spoke about Leather related collagen modelling: the challenges of modelling hierarchical structures. The 48th John Arthur Wilson Memorial Lecture, which is the traditional keynote address of the ALCA conference (which was held in tandem with IULTCS), was delivered by Richard P Daniels. He spoke about his long-term work on Tannery effluent and reedbeds: working with nature. One of the most topical papers was that on REACH by Alois G Püntener, VESLIC, Switzerland. Although much has been said and published about the new regulations, they actually went into law at about the same time as the presentation was being made in Washington. Anyone affected by the REACH registration requirements has one year, until June 1, 2008, to comply with the first round of chemicals evaluations. The aim of the EU legislation is to improve the protection of human health and the environment in the EU through the better and earlier identification of the properties of chemical substances. While no one can fault the stated intention, there are deeply held beliefs that REACH will result in many smaller companies closing and the number of speciality products going into steep decline. It is not just the European chemicals industry that will be affected. The regulations will affect anything being imported into the EU containing chemicals so finished leather products should also come under the spotlight. Ironically the opening speaker at the congress, international trade lawyer Laurence J Lasoff, explained that as tariff barriers were gradually being dismantled due to the World Trade Organisation requirement for free trade, non tariff barriers based on technical qualifications have taken over. LANXESS have developed a technology for upgrading leathers with structural defects such as veininess and looseness and Dr Dietrich Tegtmeyer took the opportunity to present the new process for the wet end in Washington, on June 23. This technology, which was developed over the past 15 months in LANXESS's Product Development and Application Department in Leverkusen and for which a patent has now been applied, is to be launched on the market under the name Levotan X-Cel. The product consists of a special polymer containing thermally expandable microcapsules and it is added during the retanning process. The microcapsules selectively fill the loose fibre structure and various voids in the leather, thereby making it fuller and giving it a more uniform structure. Tegtmeyer said: 'Levotan X-Cel is an ingenious combination of chemistry and physics which is ideal for leather. Having conducted numerous trials with the new technology in our technical service center, we are now ready to introduce it to the leather industry.' The Leather business unit is therefore installing pilot plants for processing 'X-Cel leathers' in its laboratories in each geographical region so that it can carry out initial trials on customers' material in situ. The next step will be to develop production-scale processing plants that correspond to tannery requirements as regards size and speed. This will be done in collaboration with the Italian machine manufacturers Fratelli Carlessi SpA. The process will then be ready for launching on the market. In this issue we have included abridged versions of two of the papers presented: Soaking: an investigation of how contemporary tanners seek to balance operational and quality issues in utilising both fresh and brine-cured hides by Prime Tanning and Buckman Laboratories; and Quo vadit, chromium? The future directions of tanning science by Anthony D Covington. We will be writing more about the congress in future editions but the full copy rights belongs to ALCA so for anyone interested in obtaining the full papers they need to contact ALCA or wait until the relevant issues of JALCA are published.